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Chapter 16: A Gesture to the Light Within

Now, this is not the way of the people who know. First: existence is always here and now, for all those who know. There is no distance in space and time. Those who have known, have known it here and now; there is no postponement. And whenever you will know it will be always here and now.

Just think, can you know something tomorrow? - it is impossible. You cannot know anything tomorrow. If you did, tomorrow would have turned into today. But knowing will always happen today, here and now. Can you know anything yesterday, which has passed? There is no way of going back, and there is no way of jumping ahead.

You are always here and now. You cannot move backwards, you cannot move forwards. So if you are determined to remain ignorant, you will be here and now; or if you decide to be a knower, then too you will be here and now. At least one thing between the knower and the ignorant is similar: both are here and now. That’s why communication is possible.

That’s why fingers can point to the moon. If I were tomorrow and you were today, then there would be no way of pointing to the moon.

Jesus is continuously talking of the future. He is future-oriented, like all utopians. The word utopia is very beautiful. It means that which never comes, that which is always coming, coming, coming, but never actually comes; that which is always a hope and never becomes reality. Jesus is a fanatic utopian. He believes there is a God, but he knows nothing about God. Those who have really searched have found one thing absolutely certain, that there is no God. It is the greatest lie that man has invented.

There is no heaven, no hell. Yes, you can live in heaven or in hell, but that is something psychological. It has nothing to do with the physical world, that beyond the stars, far away, is heaven waiting for you with all the pleasures that you can imagine; and down there is hell waiting for you with all the tortures that man’s mind is capable of thinking of.

Those who have looked, those who have searched, have not found anything like heaven or hell.

I say it on my own authority: there is no hell, no heaven, no God.

Hell is the state of your mind when you are miserable, when you are torturing yourself.

Heaven is the state of your mind when you are enjoying, when you are feeling a well-being, a deep sense of inner health.

And above both of these there is also a third state in you where there is no pain, no pleasure, but a totally new kind of experience.